Lunch with... Tim Campbell

Written by Jess Bowie on 20 November 2014 in Culture

Culture

Lord Sugar’s first apprentice has lunch with Jess Bowie

After his Apprentice win in 2005, Tim Campbell worked for Alan Sugar for two years before leaving to set up the Bright Ideas Trust, which helps young entrepreneurs. He earned an MBE in 2012 for services to enterprise and is currently head of client services for emerging talent at Alexander Mann Solutions.

The restaurant

Osteria Dell’Angolo

A stone’s throw away from the Home Office, this elegant but unpretentious restaurant serves delicious contemporary Italian cuisine – with an emphasis on seasonality. It’s also popular with politicians – foreign secretary Philip Hammond was enjoying lunch at a nearby table.

How the public sees Parliament When I talk to lots of the young people I work with they think it’s an alien environment. They’re blinkered by the view of the sensational press that surrounds politicians. It’s so annoying because it’s turning so many people off from one of the greatest mechanisms of change. The biggest failure of the media at the moment is instead of inspiring a generation to get involved in change by being politically engaged, they’re actually creating this wave of resentment.

Surviving testicular cancer I’m quite optimistic, so it renewed my zest to achieve all I can within the time I have – a clichéd as that sounds. I am 37 but I don’t do chronological age anymore – I just think in terms of all the experiences I still want to have. And when you get a potential pause button pressed, that’s scary.

His wife She works for PWC and is the sensible half of our family – I’m the maverick nutter.

University vs. apprenticeships My mum was very clear that we were going to university; that was the way we were going to climb that social mobility ladder. The difficultly with that is that it didn’t take into account what I was passionate about. So I studied psychology, got a 2:1, came out went to a graduate scheme and the rest is history. The beauty of the apprenticeship model is being able to learn and earn at the same time. That would have been more beneficial to me.

Boris I’m Boris’s ambassador for training and enterprise. I think Boris has the common touch. He has is the ability to come off that pedestal and just be a normal guy. That said, sometimes his jokes aren’t so funny. He’s a better politician than comedian, shall we say!

Whether he aspired to own a private jet or a football club, like Lord Sugar? No, is my simple answer. But I do want to emulate what he and other successful people have done, in that they have bought time. Someone once said you can only drive one Bentley at a time. So my aspiration is to buy lots of leisure time like Lord Sugar did.

Whether he’d be an enterprise tsar I’d rather be a baron. We have some very clever people in the Lords and I love the way people are experts in their fields. I keep telling my daughter “Be the next Baroness Scotland and my life will be complete!” Although my aspiration isn’t to be in the Lords, if there was a situation where the question ever arose then yes, this would be the direction I’d take. If I could continue being a champion for apprenticeships and business with the parliamentary machine behind me, I would.